


Broke Free on a Saturday Morning

by PositivelyVexed



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Friends to Lovers, Grief/Mourning, Hugging, Loss of Virginity, M/M, Moving On, Post-Canon, Road Trips, whole lot of hugging
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-07
Updated: 2019-11-07
Packaged: 2021-01-24 03:36:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,807
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21331630
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PositivelyVexed/pseuds/PositivelyVexed
Summary: After defeating IT and losing Eddie, Richie's not ready to be alone yet. Neither is Mike. So they drive to Florida together.
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier, Mike Hanlon/Richie Tozier
Comments: 35
Kudos: 128
Collections: Trick or Treat Exchange 2019





	Broke Free on a Saturday Morning

**Author's Note:**

  * For [scorpiod](https://archiveofourown.org/users/scorpiod/gifts).

_Mile 0_

“Okay, wow.” Richie paused on the top step, looking around the library attic. Mike looked up from his position on the floor, surrounded by open cardboard boxes. The books and maps and photos that had laid in intricate stacks the last time Richie had been up here were half-gone now, and what remained was scattered in a half-packed state of disarray. “You took down the conspiracy theory wall? I loved that wall.”

Mike wasn’t quite able to hide his smile. He’d thought Richie had left already, too distracted or too distraught to say anything to the rest of them. He’d said his goodbyes to Bill and Ben and Bev earlier today, but he’d quietly resigned himself to Richie slipping away without saying goodbye.

_You’re all alone again,_ a voice in his head had whispered as he watched Bill, the last of them, or so he’d thought, drive away. _They’ll have forgotten this by the time they hit the Maine border._ The sight of Richie sent a surge of relief through his spine. He hadn't been ready to let any of them out of his sight yet. Richie least of all. The last few days had been the hardest on him.

“Packing up. Moving on.”

Richie took a few exaggerated steps around the maze of open boxes, half-filled with books, like he was picking his way across a minefield.

“You’re getting rid of the books? Is that—is that allowed here?” His voice dropped like they were being watched.

“Ha. But seriously, weeding is a totally normal part of managing any library collection.”

“Oh, yeah. Talk nerdy to me, Mikey.”

He rolled his eyes, returning his glance to the bookplate in front of him. “Also, these are my, uh, personal collection. Some of them I’ll be keeping, some of them are going downstairs to the main collection, I’m selling some of the rare one that are worth something, but most are getting donated to the special collections at the University of—” He trailed off as Richie faked snoring. “I guess you weren’t really asking for a breakdown of what’s happening to the books. Okay. That’s fine.”

“You’re adorable. The ladies in Florida are going to love you.”

Mike waved him away, his smile feeling a little tight. He lifted his eyes from the bookplate, just enough to subtly study Richie. He stood with his shoulders heavy, his hands in a new jacket, showered and looking tired. Eyes still a bit puffy and red, lines in his face heavier than Mike remembered. Hell, all of them seemed to have aged a few years between the Chinese restaurant and now. Richie saw that he was being studied, and Mike looked away quickly. _You were the one who brought them all back here. You did this to them._

_It had to be done_, a voice in his mind that sounded like his grandpa said.

But that didn’t lessen the guilt in his chest.

“Jesus, man, don’t look at me like that.”

“Like what?”

“Like I’m about to break down crying again.”

“I’m not—” He paused. “It’d be okay if you did.”

“Thanks for the go-ahead, but I’m fine. Really.”

He raised his book up uselessly, not knowing what else to say. “Hey, uh—want to help me sort through these?"

Richie raised his eyebrows, then let out a short, surprised laugh. “Fuck yeah. I’ve been saying to myself for a while that I need to spend more time sitting down on a hard floor sorting through musty books about history. I was just waiting for the right guy to ask.”

“If you don’t want to, that’s fine,” Mike said. He had known, but not particularly cared, that he was bad with people while he had IT on the brain. Now that he was supposed to live life afterward, he supposed he’d have to figure it out. He glanced around at the books of murder and magic that had been his closest companions for the last thirty years. That might be why.

“No, now I’m into it,” Richie was already sitting down, shifting around into a cross legged position on the floor, pulling a stack of books towards him. “All right. How do I fuck this up?”

“You’re not going to fuck up. Just start putting that stack into the box in front of you.”

Richie snuck a glance at him. “You really going to drive to Florida? Hanging chads and bath salts? Every hack comic’s dream? ‘Florida Man’ Florida?”

Mike shrugged. “I made a promise to myself I’d get there someday. I guess I just want to keep that promise.” And he hadn't had time to come up with a better plan, if he was being honest. So the half-baked palm tree dreams of a thirteen year-old would have to do until something better occurred to him, once he had really accepted they had destroyed IT, and that he hadn't paid with his life to do it. He hadn't consciously realized until now how certain he had been that IT's destruction would require some payment in blood, and that the payment would Mike's.

And in the end, he hadn't entirely been wrong. Just about who would pay. He felt a sore throb in his heart, remembering Eddie. Eddie, who desperately didn't want to die.

Richie worked slowly, putting books into boxes, usually after flipping through the pages, reading out a section and speculating on how long a person had to go without getting laid to think that was a worthwhile sentence to write. It was easy deflection, something Mike recognized, and he let the jokes melt together and flow over him. Look through the stream of humor to see what was going on with Richie beneath the jokes. If nothing else, Derry had given him a talent for seeing what was going on underneath the surface.

He noticed the impatient way Richie turned pages, a dismissive look on his face but his eyes sharp, like he was looking for something in particular. Mike stole a glance at which stack he was looking at. Paranormal encounters.

It occurred to him that he had an inkling of an idea of what sort of thing Richie might be looking for in there. It took filling two boxes with books before Richie brought it up himself.

“Hey, I’m curious about something. Since you’re the local occult expert.”

“Yeah?”

“All the time you were studying up on evil alien clowns. You ever find any evidence of any _normal_ paranormal shit? Like...ghosts?”

Mike closed the book in his hand. Richie looked away, suddenly very interested in watching the sun sink down through the trees through the window, his facial muscles twitching. “I mean, we spent our childhood haunted by an shapeshifting monster that ate children. Honestly, ghosts seem a lot less crazy.”

“Richie.”

“I mean, or whatever. Werewolves, vampires, Swamp Things, Buffalo Bill. It doesn’t have to be ghosts. I’m just using them as an example—”

“Richie.” _I know what you’re really asking, and I don’t know what to tell you. _“I’ve been focused on one thing for the last thirty years,” Mike said, haltingly. _And it turns out you didn’t even know that much about IT in the end, did you? _Mike pushed the thought aside. “So when we’re talking about something supernatural other than IT? Or this town? I’m just as in the dark as anyone. I don’t know what’s out there.”

Richie pursed his lips together, like he was trying not to cry.

He sat forward, put his hand on his knee. “Richie, have you… have you _seen_ something?”

Richie shoved his hands deep into his jacket pockets, like he was trying to disappear inside himself. “Yeah. Yeah, actually. I have seen him. I see a dude crossing the street, and he’s kind of short and skinny, and I think, oh, that’s him. I hear some whiny guy talking real fast in the grocery store and I think that’s him. I see a—a fucking billowing curtain because the air conditioner kicked on, and I think I saw him. That’s definitely how it works, right? It’s a ghost, not just wishful thinking from a pathetic fuck—”

The rest of his words were muffled in the shoulder of Mike’s shirt, as Mike pulled him into a hug. Richie’s arms came up around him. “I miss him too.”

Richie made to pull away, but Mike held onto him. Something told him he should keep holding on. Richie tensed for a moment once he realized he wasn’t being released that easily. He curled in tighter. Mike clutched him tight. Like this would make up in some small way for what he had led them all into.

“So that’s a no on going ghost hunting with me. Shit, man, I was halfway to pitching a paranormal investigators show for us and everything.”

He swallowed. “I don’t know what’s out there, man. I wish I did.” He caught his hand. “I’ve looked over the years. I always hoped my parents would—”

Richie shrank back. “Shit. Sorry, man. I didn’t think of that. Okay. Ghosts don’t exist.”

“I wouldn’t go that far. I don’t know. I still hope sometimes that they’re out there, in some way. But even if they are—”

“They’re still gone,” he said, pulling away, looking regretful. “Jesus, I’m sorry, man. I forget most of you guys have already been around the block on losing people. You’ve been feeling like this since you were kids.”

“This is different,” Mike said gently. “Because it’s Eddie. Because y—” he stopped. Not sure if he should say it, name that unnamed thing.

Through a voice that was husky with unshed tears, Richie finished. “Because he turned me into a flaming homo with his asthmatic good looks.”

Mike felt a chuckle bubble in his throat, a mixture of relief that they were speaking about it and grief, for Richie and all of them. “I didn’t know that’s how it worked.”

“Yeah, me neither, until it was too late.”

Mike did laugh, the laughter shaking through both of them.

They leaned together, both a bit too tall and a bit too old to comfortably kneel on the floor in a tangled hug among the cardboard boxes. And maybe Mike wasn’t the type to hold on too long anyway without getting uncomfortable. Richie may have been that way too, and in the end, he pushed away first. They stood, knees popping as they clambered to their feet.

Richie was blushing fiercely, as he stepped over to the window, looked out on the downtown lights coming on. “Well, I think that about wraps up the bargaining stage in my grief process. What comes next? Anger? That could be fun.”

He wasn’t going to send Richie out on the road with tears in his eyes. And if he was being honest, he wasn’t ready to let him go. “Hey. I’m about to get some dinner. There’s a pretty decent Indian place in town these days. You want to come?”

* * *

The food was good. Even Richie, who’d seemingly been everywhere, agreed it was good. The mood at dinner was easy, light, with them talking mostly about Mike’s planned trip.

“Oh, shit, are you going through Charleston?” Richie said, leaning over with both elbows on the table, looking at the map Mike had brought with him. “No, you can’t go that way. This is where you need to go. All the food on this street is the best barbecue you’re going to find anywhere in South Carolina, and there’s this place with live music—”

Mike was laughing, making notes in his notebook as fast as he could—_you used to take notes on Derry’s missing children in here, are you really taking notes on barbecue joints now? Do you really think you just get to walk away, Mikey?—_trying to keep up with Richie’s ideas and banish the voice in his head.

“How do you know all this?”

Richie counted off on his fingers. “Let’s see. Tense, loveless family road trips in my teens, shitty sales jobs in my twenties, endless touring… all so I could give this knowledge to you. You need someone to set you on the right path, Homeschool. I know if I just leave you to your own devices, you’re going to end up on a tour of America’s lamest libraries.”

“What’s wrong with checking out other libraries?”

“‘Checking out?’ Is that a joke?”

They were both tipsy by the time they got the check. Richie insisted on picking it up, and they walked back to the library, standing outside awkwardly.

“You shouldn’t drive tonight,” Mike said, swaying a little on his own feet, watching Richie leans drunkenly against the wall.

Richie squinted at him. “Are you asking me to… have a sleepover in your creepy mad scientist library attic?”

“It’s not that creepy once you get used to it.”

“Has it occurred to you that you’ve maybe been living in Derry too long?”

Mike shook his head, a tight smile tugging at his cheeks, as he deadpanned, “Only every day of my life.”

They took the stairs together, side by side. Once or twice, they bumped up against each other in the dark and staggered apart.

Richie followed him into the room that had served as Mike’s bedroom for the last three years, and collapsed on the paisley sofa that had been there even before Mike had moved in, kicking off his shoes as he stretched out on the couch. “‘Night, Homeschool,” he muttered, as Mike brought him a blanket from his bed. He grabbed his wrist, hand tight around Mike’s sleeve. “Hey. I’m gonna miss you, dude,” he said, before releasing Mike and pulling the blanket around himself. Within a minute, he was snoring.

Mike smiled at him fondly, and crawled over to his own mattress.

Mike awoke from shallow sleep several hours later, eyes wide. There were unfamiliar noises in the room with him. Animal noises. Something was here. It had found him. He shook his head, rubbed his eyes. No. It—IT—was gone. He’d been woken by something else, something simpler: Richie, on the couch, making a noise like his heart was breaking.

He rubbed his forehead, tried to blink the wooziness out of his head. He scrambled off his mattress and across the room. He shook Richie, trying to wake him, trying to stop him from shaking and clawing at the sky, something glistening wetness streaking his eyes.

“Richie," he murmured. "Hey, Richie. C'mon. It's okay.” Richie, already tense, went taut as a bowstring for a moment. His eyes opened, and for a horrible second, Mike imagined they were white, and then the moment passed, and it was just Richie, blinking myopically into the dark without his glasses and twisting away from Mike’s grasp.

“Dude, okay. I’m awake.”

"Are you—”

“I’m fine, I’m fine,” he snapped, still trying to get away. Mike wondered if he wasn't the only one thinking of the Deadlights in that moment. His balled hands were rubbing his eyes desperately, like whatever sight he’d seen in his nightmare was still there, behind his eyes.

Mike felt himself still quivering. The sight of Richie frozen, blank eyed, that flash of memory—Richie’s eyes white and dead, staring up, up—

"You said it would work. It would work if we believed."

His heart clenched as ran his palm over his mouth. “What?”

“You told us to kill IT, we just had to believe.”

Richie sounded lost and close to tears. The way Richie was staring off into the empty corner of the room, and he knew what Richie meant about seeing ghosts, even when there was nothing there. Right now, he was seeing the ghosts of all of them. All the lies he told himself, telling himself it was necessary. And he’d led them into a fool’s trap.

They made it out in the end, Grandpa Leroy cut in sternly. Matter-of-factly. Belief had been the key to destroying IT after all. It just took time to figure out how.

_And all it cost you was one life._

He dragged himself up next to Richie, who was sitting on the sofa with his knees drawn up to his chest. He laid his hand on Richie’s knee. "I did say that. That’s what I thought. I spent years, checking and re-checking, trying to understand IT and how IT worked. I thought I had found the key that everyone else had missed." He couldn't stand the way Richie was shaking his head, like he didn’t buy it, like he was fighting some urge to rise up off the couch. “Richie,” he said softly. “I’m s—”

"It failed because of me, just so you know,” Richie said flatly, voice wet. “Just so we’re all really clear. I-I’m the one who didn't believe.” He reached to take off his glasses, then remembered he wasn’t wearing them. “I tried. But I thought it sounded so stupid, and even with all of us together—" a pause, like he was remembering that moment, when the six of them had been holding hands. “I just couldn’t stop thinking, you know: this is some Peter Pan bullshit, and there’s no way we’re going to be able to clap the ancient alien clown away. Besides, I can’t even face what’s going on in my own brain, no way do I have the will for this psychic power of friendship battle—”

He straightened up. “Jesus fucking Christ man, is it dusty in here or what?”

Mike felt his heart clench, but he put his arms slowly around him. Feeling at once that he needed to hug Richie, and that he didn’t deserve to. Richie didn’t pull away, just let himself be wrapped in Mike’s arms, his body shaking with the sobs he was trying to hold back.

“Man, you don’t have to hug me,” Richie said, “You guys already hugged me.”

“It was me,” he said, the guilt dragged up out of him. “It was the ritual. I was so sure I’d found the key in the ritual. I thought—”

“Dude, you don’t have to pretend—”

“I’m not saying this for your benefit. I believed the ritual would work. I was wrong.” He rubbed his hand over the back of his head, struggling for the right words. “You believed when it really mattered. When we figured out how to actually defeat IT.”

“Only when it was too late to save him."

“I shouldn’t have lied,” His voice wavered as he remembered scratching that image with a knife till his hand ached, so sure he could make it disappear, make the story mean nothing more than what he desperately wanted it to mean. It’d felt at the time like he’d no luxury for remorse or second-guessing. Was this what freedom from IT was? The freedom to look back with eyes unclouded by desperation and question every choice he’d made? “I shouldn’t have dragged you all down there without telling you what I knew.”

Richie was sighing, looking up into the black void of the rafters above. “You were trying to figure it out alone because you were alone. And honestly, if you'd told me the truth, I wouldn’t have even gone down in that crater with you.”

His grandfather’s voice whispered, _see, see?_ But he shook his head. He had loved his grandpa, but his grandpa saw everything in terms of the slaughterhouse. The air gun or the pen. Couldn't imagine escaping the slaughterhouse altogether, and Mike couldn't either. That's what he'd wanted for the others. For Eddie. But it hadn't worked out that way.

He didn’t know what else to say, so he leaned his head back along with Richie, staring up into the tower at the top of the library, listening to Richie breathe, slow and ragged beside him.

“So we’re agreed.” Richie said, dragging his hand across his nose, trying to hide the sniffle in his voice. “We’re both to blame.”

Mike flashed a sad smile up into the dark. “I don’t agree to that.”

“Me neither.”

Richie settled deeper into the sofa, their shoulders brushing as he did. Mike felt exhausted, as if he’d just been forced to run a mile. But somehow better, like poison that had been sitting in his veins so had been sucked out.

“You shouldn’t have had to figure it all out on your own,” Richie said, his voice thick with feeling. 

Mike blinked. A thought was coalescing. He held it for a moment, considered it, and decided it was good. A better invitation than the last one he’d extended, at any rate. “Come with me.”

“Huh?”

“To Florida.” He turned his head then, his lips quirking up. “I'd like it if you came. And I wouldn't have to figure it out on my own.”

“It's easy, you just take Highway 1 the whole way,” Richie said. “Wait, you’re serious? You want me to come with you?”

“Course. You're good company.” He could have said more. He could have said, _And I know you'll protect me, like you protected me back it IT's lair. And I want to protect you, because right now you look like you need it.__ I don’t want you to be alone right now, and __I don’t want to lose you again._

“Could be fun,” he said, shrugging. “If you can spare the time off from work.”

“According to my publicist’s press releases, I’m taking a break from touring due to ‘exhaustion.’” Richie raised his eyebrows ironically. “So I think I’m good.” He was nodding his head against the back of the sofa. “Fuck it, let’s do this. We can take my car.”

* * *

  
“For that timeless ‘two dudes having a midlife crisis’ experience,” Richie said, patting the dashboard of his sports car the next morning. “Ready?”

“As I’ll ever be,” Mike said, feeling suddenly wistful, taking one last glance around downtown and at the library, before getting in the passenger’s seat. He’d be back for his things and his car, eventually, but there still felt like a certain finality just the same, as he slammed the door behind him.

He rolled the window down as they peeled down the road, sunlight filtering through the leaves and dappling the road. Let the wind rush over his face as they picked up speed, recognizing a couple of sour-faced Derry elders on park benches who’d never once warmed to the sight of Mike's face after even forty years. They scowled suspiciously after them. He felt a kind of superstitious relief as they pulled past the white sign at the edge of town, the one that said, _Thanks for visiting Derry! We hope you come back soon!_

“Fat fucking chance!” Richie hollered out the window as they tore by. Mike chuckled, then, feeling something like giddiness well up in his chest, broke out into an outright laugh. He shook his head, smiling, as Richie shouted, like a teenager on his first joyride, “Derry can lick my balls!”

Maybe this counted as Mike’s first joyride. He couldn’t think of too many other times that came close. Mike felt like a boulder had untied itself from his shoulders and tumbled to the ground behind him. He started to laugh into his hand, the feeling of giddiness cresting inside him.

Richie glanced over at him, squinting in the sunlight. “You okay?”

“Just, can’t believe I’m really getting out of here. I never... you know, I never really saw myself getting out of here alive.” He stared off into the distance, the giddy giggling passing, melancholy settling in, the weight of what it’d cost. “I wouldn’t have made it out without you.”

His smile was tight, but genuine. Richie mumbled, “I’d do it again any time." As they hit a straight patch of highway as the forest opened up ahead, Richie shifted up a gear and put the pedal to the metal. Showed off just how fast this baby could go.

It was less than twenty minutes later that Mike realized they were already further from Derry than he’d ever been in his life.

* * *

_Mile 328_

They wove close to the coastline. Mike watched the waves roll in along the rocky coast as the sun climbed higher. The occasional white lighthouse gleaming pristinely out on piles of rocks that jutted into the sea. They stopped in a city in Connecticut for the first night, checking in to a modern hotel with waterfront views that Richie had booked on his phone. Mike tried hard not look around the sleek, multi-floored lobby with his neck craning around. Richie had no trouble keeping his head down when it came to the hotel itself—spend enough of your life in hotels, and they all blend together, he said—but he did keep glancing at Mike and grinning as they stood in the glass elevator, watching the ground floor disappear beneath them.

“What?” he murmured, feeling like a country rube.

“Just good to see you outside of Derry, man. You already look younger.”

They had a suite on the top floor. Mike tried to protest, but Richie tut-tutted. “You only get to leave Derry for the first time once, and I want you to enjoy it. Besides, I’d say we’ve fucking earned this minibar.”

Several minutes later, Mike found himself stretched out on one of the beds, shoes kicked off, sipping a bottle of beer. Richie was beside him. “Best $11 I’ve ever spent on a Corona,” said Mike drily.

“We’ll need to introduce you to all the things you’ve been missing out on since you were a kid. Pools, saunas. You ever gotten ice from a hotel ice machine before?”

“What do we need ice for?”

“The point isn’t to do anything with the ice. Free ice is the point.”

He snorted. He couldn’t hide it, but there was a childlike excitement to this—not the hotel, or anything about where they were in particular. Just having driven an entire day away from Derry, and feeling nothing pulling him back. Knowing he could keep driving tomorrow.

He couldn’t hide his chuckling when Richie called Bill up and gave him a tour of the room on his phone. Bill seemed surprised to see Mike there too, waving as the phone was shoved in his face.

“I’m really glad you guys are together,” he said, a puzzled smile playing on his face. “I mean, not—I think it’s great you’re traveling together. Being there for each other.”

“Wish you were here, Bill," said Richie. "You know, I think you’re short enough that you could stretch out on the loveseat over here.”

“All right, Fuck off, you two.” Bill smiled a moment later. “Just… keep looking out for each other, all right?”

Mike caught his eye on the screen and gave a small wink. _We got this. We’re taking care of each other._

Maybe that jinxed it.

As comfortable as the bed was, and the air conditioned room a practical luxury, Mike simply wasn't used to comfort. Had never quite trusted it. He struggled to fall asleep for what felt like hours, and when he did, he was back in ITs lair. They had performed the Ritual of Chud again, and again, it had failed. This time, his friends had all fallen around him, cut down one by one, while Mike was toyed with, picked up and dropped and dangled, IT always just out of reach. He knew he was being saved for last, being held back so that he could watch each and every one of them die. Screaming for his help. And in the center of the lair had been Richie, who'd swept up while running to help him—hanging in the air, still and limp. Caught in the Dead Lights.

It took him a moment to realize that the noises were coming from Richie's bed. He stared into the darkness a moment, disoriented and lost, before pulling himself out of his bed and staggering to Richie's side. He shook Richie awake, who came up with a start and a gasp.

“Want to talk?” 

Richie squinted up at him, his voice thick and slurred. “Not really, no.”

Mike stayed by his side anyway, and Richie reached out and grabbed his hand. Held it tight. Mike's heart gave a throb. There were too many things he could have said just then, offers of solidarity he didn’t know how to phrase, condolences that weren't wanted, memories that maybe shouldn't have been dredged up.

He said nothing. 

Richie didn’t volunteer anything about his dreams, and Mike didn’t ask. Richie deserved to keep some things for himself. _And maybe_, a darker voice whispered in his head, _he's safer if you stay away. That's always been how it's been in the past, isn't it? Better for everyone?_

He pushed the voice away. It was different now. He was out of Derry. IT was gone. He didn't have to spend his whole life alone.

_Did you really think leaving the slaughterhouse was as easy as stepping outside of the building?_ the disappointed, pragmatic voice of his grandfather spoke. _Didn't I teach you better than that? The whole damn world is a slaughterhouse, and you and him are both still in the pen. You know why._

He shook his head, trying to get the voice to quiet.

Richie looked at him carefully. "You all right, buddy?"

"Just thinking about stuff my grandfather said. Or would have said."

"Was he right?" asked Richie, distantly.

"I don't think he was. Not about all of it, anyway."

In the dark, Mike felt as much as saw Richie's shoulders start to shake. "Oh, fuck goddamn," he muttered, pinching tears out of his eyes. "What is this shit leaking out of my eyes like clockwork?"

Mike put his hand on Richie's back.

"You know they used to call me Old Faithful in college, but for _completely_ different reasons."

"Okay, okay, buddy," Mike said, patting his shoulder. "That's enough." He wrapped his arm around Richie, pulled him tight in a close hug.

"No one's ever wanted to get closer to me after I made that joke," Richie observed, bemused. Richie leaned his head on his shoulder, and it suddenly seemed very important that Mike feel him, taut and shaking but alive and so very real. Richie leaned into his touch.

" You know, I’m really not as huggy as this trip’s been making me look, ”Richie murmured after a moment, sounding embarrassed.

"I'm in the same boat. I haven’t really, uh, hugged anyone in a long time. Just you guys.”

“Really?" Richie said, like he was just thinking, for the first time, about what that suggested about Mike. About his life.

"But, I mean, you've, uh.... Women, right?"

Mike tightened his grip around him. “I haven’t really held a woman in sixteen years.”

“Wow. Man.” He paused. “Shit, sorry.” He pulled away, looked at the ground. “You want to, like, talk about it?”

Mike shrugged. “Not much to tell. She was visiting Derry on a research grant, we hit it off. And I realized I couldn’t ask her to stay.” Truthfully, there was more to tell than that, but he wasn’t ready to say it. Not with the nightmares waiting so close in the wings.

The muscles in Richie’s jaw were working, like he was struggling to find something to say. “I’m sorry. Seriously. You had it rough in Derry, didn’t you? Sixteen years is a long time.”

Mike thought he saw a glimmer of something else. His face falling, and a curtain drawn behind his eyes. Mike dropped his voice low, the words catch and scraping in his throat before he pushed them out. “I haven't really held a man in twenty years.”

Richie jerked back to get a look at Mike’s face. “Are... we still talking about hugging?”

Mike ducked his head down, pulling his arms across his chest, feeling very cold suddenly, and gave a small shake of his head.

Richie blinked at him. “Okay, wait. _What_?” He looked around the room, like he’d find someone else there reflect his surprise. “_You?_”

He raised his shoulders again. “I mean. Yeah.”

Richie opened and closed his mouth for a minute. "_Really?_"

"I didn't think it'd be that hard to believe."

"I guess I just never thought of you like that."

A flicker of pain, an open wound he'd thought had long since healed. He heated and looked away before Richie could see. "I just wanted you to know. I'm trying to learn not to keep too many secrets anymore."

“Okay. Well I correct my prediction. The ladies and the men in Florida are going to love you. No one is safe.” He was looking at Mike with a smile but there was something else there too. Concern for Mike. Concern bordering on fear. He felt a sudden jolt of understand, a certainty that he knew what Richie had been afraid of all those years in Derry and beyond, and maybe it really wasn't that different from what Mike's grandpa had feared for him.

He felt his face heating. "Well, I just mean," he looked down, the image of the pen, the sheep, rising up. "You're not alone, okay? Just... Know that you're not alone."

* * *

_Mile 407_

They stopped at a boardwalk for lunch. He had been away from Derry for over twenty-four hours. Walked out to the end of the pier, where the sound of the waterfront carnival had all but faded into the distance, and stood leaning on the pier, facing the ocean. Mike realized he was watching Richie out of the corner of his eyes. Richie'd always looked so goofy as a kid, but Bev had been right. He'd grown into his looks. There was something striking in them, and striking in the way he leaned against the railing, the way he looked. Mike felt a pang of guilt when he saw how sad and tired his eyes were. Even out here, far outside of Derry, he held himself tight with his arms pulled in at his sides, hands always in his pockets if he could help it, jaw muscles visibly tense. Richie was glancing back at him.

“So you never even took a weekend away somewhere?”

“I was too afraid of forgetting."

“So you knew we'd all forgotten.”

Mike nodded. “Yeah. I knew.”

Richie’s mouth twitched a little. “Shit.”

Mike felt a tug in his chest, memories unspooling as he contemplated the question. All the secrets he’d kept for so many years, all the stories—his own and other peoples’—he’d carried with him. “Would you really have wanted me to tell you?”

Richie stared out across the water, face scrunched in thought. “No. Probably not."

Richie kept staring out at the water. "Tell me about your... dude."

"My... _dude_?"

Richie shifted on his feet, looking uncomfortable and not meeting his eye. For a moment he looked vaguely like he was scanning the crowd back on the shore for paparazzi. "You know... the one you told me about last night."

"Oh. Him." He felt an ancient ache awaken, deep in his chest, where he thought he'd buried it. "My cousin left the farm when I was twenty. Got married, had to tell my grandpa he was done. But he said it was okay, because his wife's brother knew sheep and wanted to work. We hit it off." He tried to continue, but his throat was choking, looking at the water. "I don't really know what it was. How serious it was to him. But I don't think Derry wanted him there." He swallowed. That was a softer way of saying what he really thought, which is that he was cursed. That whatever part of Derry that wanted to keep Mike, hold him close at least as much as it wanted him gone, wanted to keep him all for itself. That that was why that truck had crossed the lane. Why, the paramedics had taken so long arrive. It hadn't meant to kill him—just ensure that he would never work a farm, or walk, again. But it had done what it'd meant to do. Just like, a few years later, that fire had ensured that Maia wouldn't stay. That she'd leave Derry in a hurry, grateful to have escaped with her life. After Maia, that had been it. No one else. He'd vowed he'd never pull anyone else down in the trenches with him when they didn't even know there was a war on.

Neither of them ever wrote, not that he'd expected them to.

"Was there anyone else?"

Mike glanced at him. He tried to study his face, but Richie's eyes were cast down at the Atlantic, like it held some secret. Richie finally chanced a look up at Mike, and Mike saw only innocent curiosity in his eyes.

"Maybe. But I don't really think it was anything. And... you?" he asked softly. "Don't feel like you need to answer that. But if you want to talk about—"

Richie was frowning at the water, looking puzzled. He was visibly struggling. "No one. Literally, no one. Whenever I tried, I'd get so scared I'd get sick, like, this physical pain in my stomach—" he shrugged. "Yeah. No one." He looked around again, furtively. Mike felt a pang in his chest, watching him. He always imagined that all of his friends had escaped when they left Derry, and had avoided the life of loneliness he'd led. For Richie, though, all he had was a sickening fear in the pit of his stomach, and no idea what put it there, and how to root it out.

"So if you could not sell that info to the tabloids, I'd really appreciate it."

Mike smiled, weak but genuine, nudging his elbow gently. "You're secret's safe with me."

* * *

_Mile 478_

  
They bypassed New York City altogether, though they got stuck in traffic long enough along the Turnpike to see the skyscrapers of Manhattan out the window. Richie stared at them with narrowed eyes. “You know we lived in New York at the same time? For three years in our thirties. I could have seen him and not even known it. Going into a building, or sitting a restaurant, or on the subway.” He paused. “Not the subway. Can you imagine Eddie on the subway?” He mimed being off-balance and putting his hand on a handrail, pulling it away from the rail in exaggerated horror a second later. Richie captured Eddie's facial expressions perfectly as he acted out wiping his hands off with finicky precision.

Mike couldn't help but chuckle. A melancholy silence fell in the car as they thought about him. The traffic started up again and Mike shifted into gear. Wished he could reach out and grab hold of his hand.

Richie looked long out of the window, until Manhattan started to slide away behind the outlets and warehouses along the Turnpike. Mike thought he saw Richie raise a hand in something like a salute or a wave goodbye. "So long, Eddie."

They drove on in silence.

* * *

_Mile 605 _

  
By the time night fell, they'd landed at a roadside motel that looked like it came right out of the fifties: neon flamingoes and palm trees frolicked across the sign, back and forth.

“It’s the platonic ideal of the roadside motel,” Richie had declared before pulling them in.

Mike stood on the balcony, looking down on the bean-shaped pool and the little oasis of fake palm trees around it. The summer was warm and mild. A bit too cool to swim, but comfortable for sitting on the balcony and enjoy the neon stretched out before them.

"Want to go swimming?" Richie asked.

"Nah, I didn't even bring my swim trunks."

"When has that ever stopped us?"

Mike chuckled. "Nah. I don't feel like it. But do they have an ice machine? Because I'm thinking, maybe we could put it to use." He reached into his bag. "Whiskey on the rocks?”

Richie held up the whiskey bottle, read the label and whistled. “Shit, you’ve been holding out on me, Hanlon. This is the good stuff.”

“I bought it while you were out on that boardwalk, talking to your fans.”

Richie put his head in his hands. “Oh god, don’t remind me. The questions.”

When they had their whiskey on the rocks, they sat beside each other on the balcony. Below them, music flowed out of an outdoor bar. Open mic night. They took bets on whether the next player would be any good, and mostly drifted in and out of conversation. Richie's lips lingered on the rim of his glass as he looked over at Mike, then shot a pained look at the stage, where a man was slowly self-destructing note by note.

“Jesus. This is the second worst cover of ‘Jeremy’ I’ve ever heard.”

“It's pretty bad."

"It's way past bad. This is a war crime."

"I kind of don’t mind it," Mike admitted. "Just hearing live music is welcome. No one ever sang much in Derry, you ever notice that? Like, not just that there was never any music scene. You never heard anyone playing guitar in the park or anything.”

“I remember a guy doing that once. Think he was a hippie drifting through and busking. He wasn’t that bad. Victor Criss's dad went up to him, called him a faggot, punched him in the face, then pissed in his open guitar case.” Richie's gaze didn't leave the musician on stage. “Kinda tamped down on my plans to ask my parents for a guitar.”

Mike was unnerved by the powerful sense of deja vu that gave him--not what had happened, so much as how it had happened. Before he'd started taking notes on roadside attractions and taco trucks, his notebook had been full of such incidences--so many they blended together. Made their own music. A kind of symphony of fear and hatred. “That sounds like Derry.”

“I don’t get it. How’d you survive there for so long without losing it?” Richie asked. All humor suddenly gone from his face.

He shrugged. _I'm not always sure I did_ wasn't a good answer. “My grandpa always told me we were outsiders. That hurt, but it also helped. Showed me you can be in Derry without belonging to Derry.”

Richie frowned. “He cared about you, didn’t he?”

“Yeah, he did. Harping on about survival and toughening up was how he showed it. Can’t say I blame him for that, given everything he'd been through.”

Richie went back to looking moody.

Mike leaned back in his chair, helped himself to another couple fingers of whiskey. “Who sang it the worst?”

“Hm?”

“The worst cover of this song you ever heard.”

“Oh. That was me.”

Mike laughed, feeling mellowed out by the booze and the company. “Sounds like there's a story there.”

Richie sighed deeply, dragged his hands down his face like the memory caused him some physical pain. “In college. My roommate’s brother was visiting for the weekend, and we all went out to a bar. All I knew about him was that he was a big Pearl Jam fan.” He paused. "And that I liked him." He glanced instinctively around the balcony, like someone with a tape recorder might be lurking nearby.

“I never sang karaoke in my life, but this night, I'd been drinking all night, and I just decide I’m going to get up there, and sing a Pearl Jam song, and I'm going to impress the shit out of this guy…”

Mike smiled into his glass of whiskey, shaking his head in sympathy, as Richie described the process of realizing, in front of an entire bar, that he didn't know the words, or how to sing in the right range. “Normally I'd just play the whole off as a joke. But for some reason, I kept trying." He clutched his head in his hand. "What the fuck was wrong with me?"

"It's not that bad, really," he said. "Look, you took a chance, even though Derry told you not to. That's brave, man.”

“Yeah, and Eddie Vedder down there is living proof of why some chances shouldn't be taken. Derry might have been evil, but it got that right.”

Mike leaned forward, dizzy from how emphatically his head was shaking. “Derry wasn't right," he said, embarrassed even as he said it by how over-earnest—and slurred—his words sounded. "Not about you. Not about any of us."

Richie chuckled, opened his mouth to joke, but Mike clutched his wrist, and leaned in. “It told me a lot of shit, and I believed it. I played by its rules so I could survive. But you have to know it’s all bullshit. Otherwise, what's the point of leaving, if we take it with us?”

He let go, feeling his own rush of embarrassment to rival any failed karaoke performance. "Sorry. I guess you were just joking."

“A little bit.”

“Sorry. I'm trying to be less intense."

“No, really. I actually kind of like the intensity. At least when you're not trying to drag me into battle with a clown demon from space.”

Mike ducked his head down. He took another sip of whiskey. Good whiskey, the kind you like to savor with friends.

The bellowing and moaning coming from the microphone stopped, and both of them applauded the guy off the stage. Someone else came up to the mic next, started strumming out played a soft instrumental on the guitar, and the mood got sleepier between them as the conversation turned around to sadder memories. Regrets.

“What do you think the others are doing right now?” Mike asked.

“Fucking their brains out, I hope,” Richie paused. “That sounded less creepy in my head. I mean—”

“I know what you mean. You hope they’re happy.”

"Yeah." He reached for his drink and overshot, his hand brushing against Mike’s. He pulled his hand away quickly. 

* * *

_Mile 1,089_

The further south they drove, the heavier the storm clouds crowded on the horizon. Mike struggled to cope with the heat. They were just finishing up at a diner attached to a gas station, while Mike stood outside, peering down at his t-shirt, the sweat making it stick to his body in just the minute he’d been standing here out in the sun.

“You don’t like this, you’re going to have a real hard time in Florida,” Richie said, tossing him an ice cream sandwich as he walked out of the gas station.

“It’s just… taking some adjusting, is all. I guess I wasn’t prepared for how sticky it’d be.”

“We’re on a road trip to a literal swamp.”

“Not all of Florida is a—” Mike looked down at the ice cream sandwich, and stopped. “Hey, I haven't seen this brand in years. Did you remember?”

“That you liked those? Yeah. I was just standing in front of the freezer waiting to pay and saw them and it just kind of… came back to me. I thought I’d be done with the surprise memories once we left Derry, but I guess it's the gift that keeps on giving.”

Mike took a bite of ice cream, slipping back into the blessedly cool passenger seat. “Can't complain about this one at all. What else have you remembered?” Tried to sound more casual about it than he felt.

“I remembered when we tried to go camping.”

Mike shook his head. “Don’t think I'll ever forget that.”

“Well, it just came back to me, while we were passing one of those campgrounds outside town. That was just before Eddie moved away, wasn’t it?”

“Yeah. The last summer he was around.” He remembered the order everyone had moved away, the last time he’d really had anyone he could truly get close to. Watching them peel away, one by one, letters going unanswered... “Ben and Bev had already moved away. It was just the five of us.”

“How the fuck did we get Eddie to go camping with us?”

“Bill convinced him.”

“Of course.”

They relived it as they drove down a long straight stretch of road, laughing. The memories feeling easy and sweet and bathed in a kind of untouchable summer light that never faded as they passed them back and forth.

“—And Eddie ran off, took that short cut through poison ivy trying to get—”

“And he’s itching and talking about how he definitely got a prion disease from the hamburger, and insisting we drive back into town the very first night—”

“God, I gave him so much shit for that,” Richie said.

“But you went with him anyway. You sat with him in the urgent care room the whole time.”

“Right, to better give him shit."

They were both laughing by then. Richie reenacted a scene from the urgent care unit, playing the parts of himself, Eddie, and Bill He was good at it.

“—And then it started to rain, and Stan drove us all home."

"The one and only Losers camping trip contained no actual camping,” Mike said drily. "God, I wish it could have last longer."

“Yeah. Me too.” He looked over at Mike fondly for a minute, his glance seeming to linger longer than usual.

* * *

_Mile 1,353_

  
Mike had done some research even before they left Derry on where they would need to go in Atlanta.

They found the cemetery eventually, and the grave was right were the burial notice said it would be. They found Stan’s headstone, a humble granite rectangle with clean lines, near a weeping willow. It was good spot. A proper burial. Mike remembered picking his way through the remnants of the Niebolt house to plant some of Eddie’s medicine in the dead of night. How afraid Mike’d been, in that moment, that the house still exerted some power to pull him under. How hard it was not reflect on how much Eddie would have hated it, his final resting place being there, under layers and layers of filth and decay.

He thought of all that as they walked up the hill to Stan’s grave together slowly, like if they took their time they could put off making it real when they arrived.

“This is nice,” Richie said.

“Yeah.”

“Should we, like, talk to him? Like he can hear us?”

He pursed his lips. He was studying the words on the gravestone—_Beloved Husband_. “Sometimes I do, with my parents.”

Richie studied him carefully, like Mike held some special knowledge of graveside etiquette, then stepped forward. Gave the grave a little wave with his right hand still shoved in his jacket pocket. “Hey, Stan.”

He paused. “Not all of us could make it today, but,” his throat clenched a little around the words. “We’re thinking of you. All the time.”

They stood together, a breeze blowing through the trees, stirring up some of the stifling heat of the afternoon.

Richie brushed a strand of hair out of his still-red eyes. They had gotten lost on the way there. Starting arguing about directions. Richie had lost his temper and pulled the car over and asked why they had to fucking do this. Why they were dredging up the past. Why Stan had put them in this position. 

"Couldn't he have fucking tried? For his sake? For our sakes? I don't care about whatever chess game he thought he was playing, it was _fucked up_ of him to leave us."

"I don't know why he did it. I'm not the one who can explain it. I've been staring at this shit for forty years and it still doesn't make any damn sense—" Mike was suddenly not sure quite what he was arguing for or what they were arguing about, but knowing he couldn't stop thinking about his hand clammy on his phone, the sound of Stan getting more tense, more nervous, more frightened with every word. The way fear had clenched his heart as he’d given the addresses, an icy sense of certainty already forming that Stan wasn’t really listening anymore.

_You made a man kill himself._ The pragmatist in him, the man who sounded like his grandpa, knew it wasn’t his fault. They’d all promised. They’d all known. He’d just been the messenger, and the others were going to do what they were going to do. The boy in him, though, the boy who’d watched Stan on the verge of tears when Bill made him promise, when he held out his hand under the shard of glass… that part of him that had wanted to cry in sympathy at the time, because he was scared too, wouldn't ever quite believe it.

He'd stopped then, just drifted off in the middle of his sentence.

He had cried in the car. Richie had stared at him with horror, like he’d never expected to make Mike cry, then pulled him close. He had leaned into the embrace, clinging to each other for moment like they were scared kids again.

Up here, on the hill, they were composed. Adults. Capable of bearing heavy burdens and carrying on with them. He told Stan how it had all ended. That they weren’t going to forget him. Not this time.

He stepped forward and set a small rock on the top of the headstone, among the others that were already there. “That’s from Derry. The creek bed where we had the rock fight. The very first time I met you, you were being brave. You saved me then. I… wish I could have repaid the favor.”

A moment of silence passed between them, in which only the rustle of the willow branches in a faint breeze could be heard, and then Richie was beside him. He set a stone next to Mike’s.

“Um, so, my rock isn’t as meaningful. I just got it while we were walking up this hill. But it’s smooth and round and.... It seemed like the kind of rock you might like. Jesus, man. I miss you.”

Mike stepped up, and said a few more things. He’d always felt more comfortable among the dead than the living anyway. He told Stan where Ben and Bev and Bill were now, and promised to come back. Told him about Eddie. He sensed Richie shaking beside him, and he put a hand on his arm. Just enough contact to remind him that he was here. That he wasn’t alone.

As the wind picked up, they walked back down the hill. They didn’t stay in Atlanta that night. They just kept on driving till they were both exhausted, both suddenly feeling it was very important to keep going.

* * *

_Mile 1,689_

They didn't stop till they crossed the Florida state line, at midnight in the pouring rain. They found a rundown motel just off the highway that looked like it had been built in the fifties, when this highway was still the main throughway across the state line. The motel didn't look like it'd been seriously maintained since. A neon sign lit up the _Vacancy_ but not the _No_, and Mike was suddenly so very tired that he didn't think he could go further if he tried. He pulled over.

In the smokey, wood-paneled motel office, he learned there was only one unrented room, and it had only one bed.

"Sure, whatever," Mike said. The man squinted at him, and then at Richie's drowsing face in the passenger's seat, and frowned. Like he was considering sharing his opinion on two men sharing a bed, but he just took the money and handed over a key.

"Come on," Mike said, running back out to the car and pulling it around. "There's, uh, there's only one bed." Wondered immediately what the hell he'd been thinking, not asking Richie before he'd paid for the room. Would he think—?

There was a flicker behind Richie's eyes. Mike had sized up the fear in Richie's eyes a lot in those days before the showdown, and he thought he saw a reflection of that same fear now. But it passed for a moment, and Richie shrugged. "Just so you know, though, I snore, and I like to starfish." He stretched his arms out in front of Mike's face, blocking him repeatedly as he tried to reach for his overnight bag in the back.

Mike pushed his arm out of the way. "I haven't heard you snoring once yet."

"Oh, I only do it when there's someone else in the bed. Clears out the clingy chicks before they can ask for a commitment." Mike shook his head and grabbed his overnight bag. Richie had been steering clear of the jokes about banging and chicks, given that Mike now knew he wasn't doing either. Mike wondered what it meant that he'd slipped back into joking about it now.

Mike slipped into the bed, feeling vaguely nervous for no good reason, and wondered again if he should be wearing sweatpants. He'd started out sleeping in them up in Maine, but by now it was so hot all the time that the thought was unbearable. He was just wearing boxers and his undershirt tonight, especially with the rickety, spitting air conditioner looking as unreliable as it did. 

Richie came out of the bathroom, dressed much the same. He hadn't thought much of it before—as kids in the summer it'd seemed like they'd all lived in their tighty-whiteys around each other. But that had been before the summer when they were 18, the last time he and Richie had seen each other. When—

A lot had changed. Now, he knew about Richie, and Richie knew about him. He guessed that was what the barrage of uneasy joking was really about. Mike was tempted to reassure him that he wasn't going to do anything, make any of it weird, but he decided it would be better to just behave as normal. They were friends. They trusted each other.

"Do you remember when we would all slept in the clubhouse in a pile together, the summer before Ben moved?" he asked, slipping into his side of the bed, feeling the cool sheets under his skin.

The message: this is just the same as that. Easy and uncomplicated. Except that hadn't really been true even then, had it?

Richie snorted. "Can't forget that."

They both lay carefully in bed, each lying flat on their side of the bed. Mike had his arms under his pillow. He heard Richie's head shift. “You finally made it to Florida. Is it everything you hoped it would be?”

He looked around the room, the brown spots on the ceiling and the creepy pink and green walls. He laughed. "Just about, yeah.”

"Great! We can head back to Maine in the morning."

He shoved Richie under the covers, and Richie shoved him back. It felt easier and more right than he could have imagined, but before he could think about that further, exhaustion caught up with him, and he slipped away under the waves of sleep.

* * *

_Mile 0_

_1994 _

Mike heard a car following him, and a second later, a voice from the car shouting at him. He put his head down, and pedaled faster.

“Homeschool! Hey, Homeschool! Mike!" Mike recognized the voice and slowed. A giant boat of a Buick rolled up beside him, revealing in the driver's seat a skinny dark-haired kid in glasses. "Jesus, man, I haven’t seen you in forever.”

"Richie?"

Richie popped his head out the door, car still running. "Of course! Where've you been? Do they have a telephone on that farm, or did you guys turn Amish when I wasn’t looking?" he asked.

"No, we've been short-handed on the farm. Can't really get away."

"Well, shit. I thought you must have left too. Want a ride?"

Mike was able to get in his bike in the back of the station wagon, and when he hopped in beside Richie, he asked if he'd heard anything from the others.

“Can you believe I haven’t heard from any of those assholes lately?”

"They've probably just been really busy," Mike said. "Moves are hard on people. And Stan's out taking college classes already."

Richie shook his head. "I guess we're supposed to believe that all that fresh out-of-state pussy's got them so distracted they can't even pick up the phone and call."

"Is that what we're supposed to believe?" Mike asked. He was smirking at Richie, even as he felt a knot of worry forming in his stomach. "What do you need to talk to them about?"

“About life? About when we'll meet up again? About when I can bang their moms again?"

Mike felt a heavy tightness in his chest as Richie continued on about their friends' silence. He knew Bev hadn't been in touch much since the summer of '89, but that had been expected. Ben had moved two years later. Before that, he and Mike’d become close, bonding over library visits and research into the town's history together. By the time he'd left, Mike had been closer to Ben than anyone else in the gang, but he was gone halfway through sophomore year. They had promised to stay in touch.

For the first couple of weeks, they’d shared research in long letters, but the letters from Ben quickly fell off in length. Soon Ben was sending a few sentences of bland updates about his life and equally bland questions about Mike’s life once a month. Mike got an uneasy sense from them. Like Ben didn’t remember him or why he was still corresponding with Mike, and was hoping his questions would spark some memory.

Soon after, Ben had dropped off responding altogether.

To hear Richie tell it, Eddie, Bill, and Stan had all been the same way after their moves.

It was like there was something about escaping Derry’s gravitational pull that made the memories of it—of them—fade away like a bad dream.

“Am I a fucking ghost?” Richie was asking. “Am I dead and don’t realize it?” There was a genuine note of frustration and—maybe—fear. “What the fuck?”

Mike swallowed. It was just a theory. People didn’t just lose their memories. “You’re not. They’re just busy. Like I've been. They'll get back in touch.”

“When I move away, you’re not going to forget me too, are you, Mike?”

“No way. You’re a hard guy to forget, Richie.”

Richie looked at him seriously. "You better not." He turned the engine on. “You know I’ll stay in touch with you. Even when I’m rolling in pussy and money, I won't forget.”

The ride into town turned into a ride to the burger joint, and then a ride to pick up some beer from Richie's house.

The two of them laid on the hood of Richie’s car that afternoon, above the old quarry, feeling the heat bake off the paint until they were uncomfortably warm. Then they stripped down to their underwear and jumped into the quarry. They swam out across the lake, just the two of them, Richie talking a mile a minute, and Mike letting him, until he could get a word in edgewise, dry and earnest, and it’d take Richie by surprise, and he’d laughed until he snorted water through his nose. He remembered liking it. Taking a newfound comfort in a voice that carried on, that hadn’t faded into nothing.

They’d swam up to the edge of the highest quarry wall, trying, and mostly failing, to rock climb up the walls, before losing their grip and sliding back, laughing.

"When was the last time we did this? As a group?" Richie asked.

"Before Bill left. About two years ago?" And it had just been four of them then. It had seemed odd to Mike, even then, how fast the Losers Club was dissolving, each thread pulled loose making the next easier and easier slip away. For all that Richie talked, they both knew Richie was next. Richie would be driving across country to his school in California in just a couple weeks—_very reputable, it’s made several top ten party school lists_, Richie assured him—he looked over at Mike. “Hey, you’ve never left Derry, have you? You want to come with me? It’s not Florida, but there’s palm trees and beaches.”

There had been a shyness in his voice when he said it. His dark hair and pale face bobbed low on the water, like he was trying to hide a blush on his cheeks. 

Mike stretched out on his back, took a few long, lazy strokes as he seriously considered it, looking over at Richie as he did. Richie frowned, and swam over, slipping over on his back as well—that body that had suddenly gotten so long, with the beginning of real musculature in his shoulders, legs stretching as he stroked and kept pace with Mike. 

"Well? This offer ain't gonna last forever."

He imagined it. Imagined the whole west opening up out before them as they drove across some painted desert. Then he rolled back over on his front, bringing the old quarry back in view. “I wish I could, but my grandpa’s getting real old. He really needs me on the farm, and I don't think he can spare me.”

Richie groaned, and splashed a handful of water at Mike. “Goddamn. You’re too responsible." He quickly splashed out of the way of Mike, who had made a lunge for his legs. "Too slow!"

Mike swam after him, back towards the high quarry walls where Richie was headed.

"You’re going to stick around here, aren’t you? For the long run, I mean.”

“Maybe,” he said.

Richie shivered. “You’re braver than me." 

"And faster," he said, catching up handily with Richie, easy enough considering he had been breast-stroking in order to keep talking. Not that Richie acknowledged that when Mike caught up to him.

"Oh, come on. You have an unfair advantage, with those long legs and those freakishly broad shoulders."

He looked around. They were suddenly aware of the the sun sinking down below the trees; the walls above them plunging the water around them into shadows. Mike was startled by how suddenly it seemed to turn cold. They had both hid under the quarry wall, hands scrambling against the granite, neck deep in water, trying to psyche themselves into pulling themselves out of the water and running along the ledge to the shore. Neither of them made a move out of the water, though. They just hung together, shit-talking each other.

Richie had lunged at him, tried to push him out of the water, and Mike had grabbed him, trying to push him away. He wasn't sure quite what was happening, except that they were grappling under the water, trying to alternately force the other's head under or force the other to the surface. All Mike knew was that he was suddenly, uncomfortably aware of the warmth of the laughing, twisting, slippery body under his hands, and he realized Richie was too. They were both still in the water, their legs kicking together so their heads stayed above water, and Richie's hand was on his chest and shoulder. Mike had felt twinges of interest in his male friends before, especially when they'd been rough-housing, but none of his other friends had ever looked at him the way Richie was looking at him right now. Richie leaned forward, like there was a string on him, pulling him towards Mike. 

Mike felt like he was supposed to pull away, but he didn't really want to. He moved toward Richie. The sudden movement startled Richie, and he turned away and started coughing. Not coughing. Something between hacking and dry-heaving.

"You alright?" he asked, alarmed.

Richie pushed him away, and swam towards the shore, like he was being chased. "Just fucking with you!" he hollered in a high, strangled voice. “Come on, Homeschool, catch up with me!” He said it with a demented sort of determination. Mike stared after him, bewildered. Not knowing what the hell had just happened between them. Or maybe knowing, and afraid of everything it meant.

They'd emerged from the water into deep twilight, solitary and silent, and Richie'd dropped him off at the farm, chattering inanely about seemingly anything that popped in his head.

"I'll call you, we can hang out again before I leave," Richie said as Mike pulled his bike out of the back. "Later!"

Mike couldn't say he was surprised when the call was slow in coming, but it still stung, when he called the Tozier house, and discovered Richie had left early for California.

* * *

_Mile 1,689_

_ Present Day_

He woke up in the early morning hours. His first thought was that he was in the rotten cool air of IT's lair, a sickly breeze blowing on them from nowhere and everywhere at once as wounded animal sounds echoed through the cave. And then he was fully awake, and realized the rickety air conditioner needed to be turned down. He realized a second later that the animal sounds came from Richie.

"Richie?" he whispered, shaking his shoulder. Richie woke up, gasping.

"You're okay," he whispered, his mouth close to Richie's ear. "Come on, buddy. Wake up."

"Fuck my life," Richie muttered, sitting upright.

"Hey," said Mike, sitting back, relaxing his grip on Richie's arm. He thought of Richie in the Dead Lights again. Eddie dying. Everyone dying. He wondered if he'd ever have a break from his own dreams. "IT?" he murmured softly.

Richie shook his head, scrubbed his face with his palms. "No. After."

"After?"

Richie let out a shaking breath. "I dreamed we were at the quarry again. The five of us. After...." he shook his head, unable to get Eddie's name out. "We were in the quarry. And I was crying and I couldn't stop crying."

Mike put a comforting hand on Richie's shoulder, the thin fabric of his shirt shifting under his hand, his skin radiating heat.

"I kept crying until you all fucking left," he said, the rawness in his voice a testament to how little he wanted to tell this dream, but how badly he needed to. "So I stayed there, on that rock, because I knew there was something there I was missing, something I'd left—"

"Hey," Mike said. "You know I'd never leave you behind no matter how much you cry, right?"

Richie gave out a sharp, wet laugh. "The phrase every grown man longs to hear."

Mike smiled. He remembered, dimly, the promises he'd made to himself to stay on his own side of the bed. It was easy enough to brush it away and slide over. Richie tensed under his touch, but allowed himself to be wrapped in a hug.

"It felt like there was something there in the quarry," Richie said again. "Something I was missing."

"Your glasses, maybe?"

Richie snorted and leaned his head against Mike's shoulder, and for a moment, Mike wondered if they might fall asleep like this. He was tired enough that he easily could have. Just as it felt like Richie was relaxing in his arms, he tensed and twisted away, sitting straight up in bed.

"Oh, fuck," Richie said. "I just remembered. The quarry."

They sat next to each other on the bed. Richie's hands were running through his hair in distress.

“Shit. You never heard from me again.”

“I mean, I did. Eventually.”

Richie looked at him skeptically. "I just walked out on you. That's such a shitty thing to do to a friend."

Mike swallowed. Whatever had been there between them, even if it was just teenage curiosity, there was no doubt that Richie had been right to fear it. He knew Derry as well as Mike did. Boys like them were automatically in the pen, not holding the air gun.

"I was always going to stay, and you were always going to leave. It would have happened anyway." 

Richie smacked the pillow next to him. "I'm not buying the whole Zen master act. I know you're not _that_ chill of a guy, and you shouldn't _be_ chill about it. Any of it. None of this—you having to wait alone for IT to come back, you getting your love life squashed by an evil town, your friends leaving and forgetting you? None of this is normal. And what I did—"

"Was normal. You got scared and you ran away. It hurt, but it happens. You were young and scared." Mike said it firmly. It felt strange to say it, but as he said it, he felt certain it was true.

"I don't know how much more clear I can make this, but I really haven't improved. I left you and ran away thirty years ago, and I did it again two weeks ago. I run away from every fucking thing I feel till it's too late and I can't save anyone."

Mike looked at him evenly, his heart aching, wanting to tell him—something—but not knowing how much to say. How much was fair, and how much Richie would want to hear, when he was still mourning Eddie. But he did have an honest answer for this, at least. "You saved me. You saved me twice. Remember how you saved my life by planting a tomahawk in Bowers's skull? And throwing a rock at that clown spider?"

Richie sighed, a wet kind of sniffle in his throat. “I do like saving you."

"You always had my back when it really counted." Richie's smile flickered, like he wasn't convinced that was true, like he was about to protest. "Were you just scared for yourself, when you ran away? Or were you scared for me too?"

Richie looked at him, eyes puzzled. "I was scared for us both."

"Me too," Mike said. "I was scared too. I've spent the last fifteen years pushing everyone away because I was scared for them. If that's a failing for you, it's a failing for me too."

There was an uneasy pause between them, an energy that wasn't sure where it was going to go or what form it was going to take. Richie distracted himself by looking around the room. The water stain, the high pile carpet, the pink walls lit up by a flickering bulb that somehow cast a green-tinted light. "God, this place is creepy," said Richie. "I don't think I'm going to be able to get back to sleep in here. Do you want to just get going? It's almost morning."

The thought of watching the sun rise over the ocean held a certain appeal. "Yeah. Let's get out of here."

* * *

_Mile 1,836_

Sunlight and flat sand. They were still far enough north in Florida that the coastline hadn't been developed to hell and back. The buildings around here were sparse and low to the ground, with only a couple humble beach hotels hugging the beach. They were both quiet. Talking about feelings tended to leave Mike feeling beat, exhausted in some bone-deep way, and judging by the way Richie slumped in his seat, he was too.

“Hey, look, pull over here,” Richie said. The sun was rising fast, but the rest of the world was seemingly still asleep.

“Where are we?”

“Not sure, but look at this. This is what I came here for. This is the perfect beach, and it's so early, there's no one here. Come on. You haven't even been in the ocean yet, have you?"

“I still didn't bring swim trunks.”

“Again, has that ever stopped us?”

“It’s a public beach, I'd be worried about indecent exposure.”

“That’s why you keep your underwear _on,_” Richie said matter-of-factly.

Mike looked around the beach, weighing the fact that stripping down to your underwear to go swimming was a lot less charming when you were forty years old. There were a few early-rising beach bums, some people walking down the beach further down, but mostly, it was still early enough and cool enough that they were alone.

“Dude. You dragged me back to Derry and made me climb into a crater where an evil space clown lived. Now we get to do something I want to do.”

“I can't argue when you put it like that.”

It didn't escape his attention what they were doing, and he wasn't entirely sure he knew whether it was the right thing to do or not. He wished he had more experience—or at least something that prepared him for this. Some way to know whether it was wrong to feel the way he did about Richie and hope for what he was hoping when Richie was—they both were—still grieving Eddie. But Richie was right. Nothing about this was normal.

They staggered down to the water, the sand and the stiff legs from the car and less sleep than they should have had making them clumsy. That easy touch between friends—between people—he hadn’t experienced consistently in years before this trip. Richie stumbled against him, hands in his pockets, blushing, but the sea air and maybe the talking and memories had loosened him up, made him more casually affectionate than Mike could remember him being.

Mike pulled his shirt off, and this time, he definitely noticed Richie staring. Something close to openly. He dropped his eyes, smiled, decided to return the stare as Richie left his clothes in a pile on the beach. Not as slender or as lithe as he'd been at eighteen, obviously. But the sight of him standing on the edge of the water, grinning, half-in-the-surf, blue boxers wet with spray still did something for him. There was no precipice to jump off here. Just a flat spit of sand leading gently into the waves. He took a moment to enjoy the feel of the damp sand under his toes, watching water fill up the imprint his foot left behind, and then Richie was running ahead of him and he followed, the two of them crashing into the waves together.

Richie waded in up to his chest, looking like he felt more comfortable covered up. Mike stayed back a bit, taking the sight in: the immensity of the ocean, the sun hanging just over the ocean. Then he dove in, swimming up to Richie and tackling him around the legs. They splashed together in the waves, trying to yell over the sound of the sea. It was shocking, how easily the feeling of being young returned. How easy they could be with each other out here.

The tide was steady but not treacherous, a steady pulsing current that kept gently to drag him out to sea. It was a strange sensation to Mike. It felt like encountering a new kind of being, outside of anything Derry offered: something immensely powerful and dangerous that held them no ill will, offering hope as much as fear. 

"What do you think?" Richie called over the waves. He'd been stiff and tired in the car, but it was amazing how relaxed he looked out here, like the years and the weeks floated away in the water.

“It’s incredible. I could stay here all day.” He thought that if he had still been a kid, he would have. But he didn't have that kind of energy, and eventually, they ended up sitting in the sand, where the waves still tugged at them every time they rolled in. The sky darkened above them. The beach should have been filling up, but instead, it was emptier than before. Richie rolled over and grabbed his glasses, looked up at the sky, where heavy storm clouds rolled in the distance.

“Those clouds are really booking it.”

He looked around at the empty beach, just as lightning cracked the sky over the water.

"I think we should get out of the water,” Mike said.

They'd just finished getting their clothes back on when it started pouring rain.

Richie pointed at the hotel building off to their right. "I think that's closer than the car. Let's go."

When they got in the lobby, they stood there making puddles. "Okay, new idea," Richie said. "I get us a room, we shower, and then we get all the sleep we didn't get last night."

"Sounds brilliant."

When they were up in the room, with its cheerful coastal decor and its two beds, Mike stood in the doorway, feeling water drip down to his feet. "We really didn't plan this well."

"Not bringing our luggage in from the car?"

"Yeah. We've got nothing to change into, and I'm not staying in these." He meant it perfectly innocently—his wet clothes were clinging to him, he hated the feeling, and he couldn't wait to get out of them. After he said it, though, he realized it sounded anything but innocent. 

Richie's face reddened. Richie, who had turned everything into a joke about masturbation or mom-fucking at age thirteen, was blushing at the real possibility of being naked with him. A second later, he started coughing; that same hacking-heaving from the quarry. Richie looked absolutely miserable for a moment, a mixture of fear and guilt on his face so intense it made Mike hurt just to look at him. Richie nodded. "Jesus. So fucking smooth." 

"It's okay," Mike said. "We can go get the luggage out of the car, I didn't mean we had to—"

Richie was shaking his head, a soft fondness in his eyes, and an expression of indecision twisting his mouth. A moment passed in which they regarded each other. Mike thinking again about how his body had felt against his under the water, the two of them wriggling against the tide and each other.

Richie launched himself across the entryway to him. He didn't so much kiss Mike as shove his lips up against his like he was baring his own neck for slaughter, half-missing his lips entirely and hitting his chin. His lips were dry and chapped, but desperate, and his whole body, warm and solid, pressed against him with such forceful hunger that Mike was forced to take a step back into the wall. He was frozen for a minute in sheer surprise—however he'd imagined this playing out, Mike had always thought that he would have been the one to make the first move. As it was, it took him a second to react, for his hands to come up around Richie's back, for his lips to move against Richie's, the softness of his motion slowly inviting Richie to relax his lips, to kiss him properly. The feel of their bodies together seemed right, like two books fitting together, and the heat under his skin sparked some deeper need, awakened something he'd thought he had tightly under control in Derry. 

Richie pulled his lips away just enough to whisper, "Well, I'm not standing here in wet clothes while you shower."

Mike was fine with that. He pulled him by the hand into the bathroom. When they stood together in the middle of the tiny room, Mike kissed him again, and seized Richie's wet t-shirt by the hem, peeling it off him. Richie obediently raised his hands over his head, even as he was trembling so hard he looked in danger of slipping. It took them a while to peel the wet clothes off each other's bodies, but when they did, they stood in front of each other, skin goose-pimpled and naked. Richie was staring openly at Mike's prick, hard and eager, like another man's cock was something out of a fantasy book come to life for him. He pulled Richie into a slower kiss this time. Richie's hands were searching, getting bolder by the moment as they looped around his waist and pulled him close. Richie's hands slid around to his front, and braved their way up his chest, like the sensation of a man's skin under his fingertips fascinated him, his finger hitting a patch of chest hair. Richie's cock visibly twitched, and Mike felt an ache of longing.

"So..." Richie said, his fingers tracing his throat. "Shower?"

The water ran over them as they stepped in, rivulets of water running down both their faces, and they stepped around the shower delicately, trying to figure out the right way to do this. He got soap in his hands and rubbed it down Richie's front, enjoying the sight. Richie, put his head back, like just the feel of Mike's hands exploring his body was enough to push him over the edge. Mike kissed him again, then pushed him back against the wall, enjoying the little noise that came out of his mouth as he found himself trapped between the wall of the shower and Mike's body.

Richie sucked in a breath, and closed his eyes.

“You all right?”

He nodded, looking a little dazed. “Yeah. Course,” like he was struggling to collect himself. He brushed his thumb along Mike’s chin. “Be gentle with me, Mikey. It’s my first time.” The irony in his voice was just a little too forced, the fake breathlessness just a little too real.

He cupped his hand behind his head and kissed him. “I mean—if you're not ready,” he offered. Feeling a certain desire to protect Richie and make this good for him. Whenever it happened.

“Shit, man. I think waiting decades is long enough.” He glanced down at Mike's cock, staring with intense fascination at how close their cocks were, both hard and at full attention. Richie canted his hips forward, rubbing his cock against Mike's and moaning like it was the most amazing thing he'd ever felt. 

Mike didn't disagree, at the moment. He moved their hips together, his aching cock rocking against Richie's. Richie watched as long as he could until the sight was too much for him, and his eyes flicked away. It was, Mike had to admit, appealing. Seeing him embarrassed.

“You, uh. You’ve done this before, right?”

Mike kissed him, feeling the desire to impart some calm to him through his touch, reminding himself that this could be done, that it was allowed, and it made him calmer. Remembering that his body was a thing that could feel good, and make someone else feel good. It felt like someone else’s memories. “Yeah. But not in a long time.” He grasped his hand around their cocks, stroking them both together, and Richie let out a deep, shaky moan, his face turned hard against the water, eyes squeezed shut. He relied on Richie's responses to steer him, trying to draw more of those pleased moans out of him. He wanted, suddenly, to show him what it felt like it had taken Mike too long to learn, that there was nothing wrong with this, that this could feel good, and he didn't have to feel guilt over it.

They'd both been waiting a long time. In general, and for each other. Richie was trembling and panting after only a minute, his mouth pressed hard against Mike's shoulder and his hands clasped tight around Mike's as he came. Richie's hand wandered down and stroked Mike after that, and the touch was so good—so welcome and so familiar and unfamiliar at the same time, that Mike came against his hip a moment later.

"Fuck." Richie muttered, voice raw. "That was... fuck."

"It sure was."

"If my legs weren't tired before..."

They soaped themselves off in minutes, both of their legs tired and wobbly as they dried off. They crossed the room naked together, Mike wondering if that felt as thrillingly taboo to Richie as it did to him, and they collapse in bed together, pulling the covers up tight.

"Fuck," said Richie again. "That was awesome. I really shouldn't have waited so long." Like it was as simple as that. Mike thought that maybe for them it wasn't ever going to be so simple. That the paths they had taken, the bonds they had forged and what they had survived together had scattered their lives together and out of order. That it meant that they'd always be arriving at things slightly later, or slightly too early. He thought about Stan and Eddie, and felt a sob rise up in his throat, but it was one split between grief and gratitude. He felt, for the first time, as thankful to be alive and to be here as he was sorry they were not. Richie was watching him, and somehow, seemed to intuit some of that. "That's right, man. Stick with me, I'll see you through," he said sleepily, wrapping his arms around Mike's shoulders. Mike smiled, and brushed the hair out of his face, a surprised sigh escaping his lips.

"What?"

"It's just hard to believe I'm here," he said softly, looking out the window where the sky was already clearing up again. "But I'm glad I am."


End file.
